If you follow maemo then unless you live under a rock you’ll have heard all about MeeGo.
Yesterday Intel and Nokia announced the merging of their two linux based mobile projects, Moblin and Maemo. This has certainly got a lot of people talking in the maemo community, but with little extended detail about the project a lot of assumptions are being made and some people are getting quite worked up.
Ari Jaaksi (head of maemo at Nokia) has posted some interesting bits of info. More details here at the Symbian Blog.
So basic info seems to be:
- MeeGo aimed at more devices than just phone (TVs, netbooks, etc)
- UI will be QT based, like Maemo 6
- Packaging system will be RPM, unlike DEB in Maemo
- Version 1 expected Q2 2010
- Will “build upon” the Moblin core software platform
- Will support both ARM and X86
The first question that’s raised is what happens to the Maemo community? Whilst those whose main interests are Maemo 5 and 6 may well switch there are many people who still support the older N770 and N8×0 tablets with the older versions of Maemo. Also it’s not yet known if the N900 will be officially supported or if it will need community effort to get MeeGo (or Maemo 6) onto it. From the Ari’s posts it seems if you’re developing for Maemo 5 in QT then your apps will work on MeeGo. Also it seems the contracts of the maemo community members paid by Nokia have been extended. So it looks like support of Maemo 5 is fairly safe during the lifetime of the N900.
The next question is, what happens to Maemo 6? On first hearing the news I figured this meant it would not get the chance to advance from Maemo 5 because of all the time involved with the merger. However something Ari said has proved quite interesting, “Maemo6 will be MeeGo compatible…..consider Maemo6 already a MeeGo instance”. This seems to imply that Maemo 6 has already under gone the merger work with Moblin and is already a version of what would be called MeeGo. Considering that Nokia and Intel first announced plans to cooperate back in June 2009 this could mean a lot of the work required for the merger of the two systems has already been done.
Anyway, enough with the speculation. I think for now it’s best to sit back and wait for the news to come in over the next few weeks rather than getting too worked up over rumours and assumptions.
Interesting times lie ahead.
Update: Another interesting announcement yesterday was the release of the Maemo 6 UI Framework, screenshots here.
Update 2: Quim Gill gives away some details of how this affects Maemo 6. Maemo 6 will be renamed, however it is not a full MeeGo product. Seems what I assumed earlier wasn’t correct.
Update 3: Anyone worried about Nokia support for N900 should feel slightly better today, minor firmware release (PR1.1.1) is out. This should pave the way for the next major release (PR1.2) due in the next few weeks. So far those who have upgraded report performance improvements. No offical changelog yet.
Today’s the day. Maemo 5 PR1.1 was released at 7am local time in Finland.
Apparently the release is staggered through the various countries over the next 24 hours, so you might not have it in Application Manager just yet.
The update also brings changes to the SDK so be sure to update those if you’re a developer.
Extensive list of changes available here.
When the Ovi store opened yesterday I went and checked it out. The N900 apps were about as underwhelming as I had expected.
There seem to be a bunch of apps from Nokia that shipped with the N900 originally (Qik, Facebook, Evernote, etc), then there are a massive number of what look like coding by numbers apps and games all with the word “Touch” in the name from a company called Offscreen. It looks like Nokia gave them some cash to produce a bunch of novelty apps in order to try and fill out the store.
There is one gem in store though, that’s a game called Angry Birds by Rovio. The concept is simple, you have a bunch of birds and you need to fling them at pigs using a slingshot. There are obstacles in the way which you must break through or go over. There are 5 different types of bird, ranging from standard birds, to cluster birds and egg bomber birds. The first 21 levels are free then you can pay 3 quid for the next 42. Admittedly the same game is only 59p on the iPhone store, but I enjoyed it so much I was happy to part with the 3 pounds.
There really is little on the store at the moment and Angry Birds is by far the best of the bunch. If you’re after apps then you’ll find many more useful apps in the Maemo Extras and Extras-Testing repositories through the built in Application Manager.
Hopefully the store will grow over the coming months, but i expect the apps in the maemo repositories to be where most of the good stuff is.
Vagalume, a last.fm client for maemo, was released for N900 a while back, but had been castrated thanks to Last.fm’s rules about being able to stream to mobile devices.
All is not lost as it seems there is a very easy way to get it to work. It’s a quick process and works perfectly. Head over to NokiaAddict for the instructions.
As I’m sure most people already know a minor firmware update has been released for the N900.
Apparently the main reason for this update is to allow the for the much larger PR1.1 firmware update to be installed OTA (Over The Air) through the Application Manager. The two most visible changes are to the Application Manager (new icons give it a better look and feel) and that the N900 Ovi Store is now open.
The update can be installed OTA via the Application Manager or using the Nokia Software Updater in Windows. I’d recommend the first method as it’s faster, easier, and you wont lose any settings. If you run into an error message about no space to install then read this.
Here’s looking forward to the release of the big update.
Update:
fairly good info on the changes in this release here from Urho Konttori
The rootfs of the N900 is stored on a 256mb partition of NAND memory. This memory is faster than the 32gb of storage. However sometimes this space limit can cause issues when installing apps.
The main problem here is that some poorly packaged apps install things in the rootfs instead of the 2gb application parition on the main memory. Also sometimes downloaded packages haven’t been removed by the application manager.
If you receive a no space message then try these steps.
Firstly clear downloaded packages by rebooting the device. You can also do this with the command “apt-get clean” whilst root in an X-Term, if you don’t understand this then reboot the device.
If this doesn’t clear sufficent space then you have probably indulged in Extras-Devel a little too much and now you’ll need to start removing apps that you have installed. Unfortunately without a lot of hassle there isn’t an easy way to determine which apps are taking up space in rootfs and you’ll need a bit of trail and error.
Hopefully this should clear up sufficient space for you to install new app or updates.
Update: If you’re still short of space then disable repositories you don’t need and refresh your updates. This will remove the database files for these repositories and free up more space. If you only need a few meg then it may well be worth trying this before removing apps. Finally reboot to clear up any temporary files no longer required. If this still doesn’t do it and you’re trying to install a Maemo firmware update then you’re probably going to have to use the Nokia Software Updater, remember to run a back up first.
Just a little reminder concerning Extras-Devel, the software found here is really in alpha or beta stages and may well cause much more serious problems than filling up your rootfs. Please remember this before you hit that install button.
Unfortunately because Google don’t use the standard ActiveSync protocols the Mail for Exchange (MfE) system on Maemo doesn’t support it offically.
It seems to be hit and miss, some people say it works fine, others say it doesn’t work at all.
There is however a solution.
Using Nuevasync you can now sync with Google (and other) services. Contacts and Calendar are free, but to get Push Email support you need to pay 25 dollars for a year. One of the nice things about it is the ability to get data from different accounts. I have my contacts come from my gmail account but my calendar comes from a google apps account.
You can sign up for a 5 day trial account (lets you try the email) here. Configuration instructions are available here.
I don’t use it for email myself, but it works perfectly with my contacts and calendar.
